Chapter 34
Chapter
Thirty-Four
" B y God!" Blackwood raged, his eyes wide. He felt like a trapped animal about to be skewered for the cook fire.
"No," Ruari assured him, as he stepped away.
"By... me !"
The immediate threat suddenly gone, Blackwood rolled to his feet and picked up his sword. But when he would have struck out there was only air.
Ruari circled round the chapel, slipping in and out of shadows, disappearing, then reappearing in the flickering light of that oil lamp.
Blackwood followed the sound, a glimpse of a shadow moving in the shadows, then the gleam of light at that armor.
"Who are you?" he demanded, with no patience for chasing shadows. He was more accustomed to meeting an enemy straight on out in the open.
"A ghost, come to do murder?" he taunted.
A sound came from his other side and he whirled around.
"Show yourself!" he demanded.
Time was not on his side, Ruari knew, as he lunged with the sword and carved a wound at Blackwood's sword arm.
He bellowed in rage, a sound that would soon draw others.
"No ghost," Ruari said. "And not murder." He moved quickly, Blackwood drawn by his voice in the silence of the chapel.
"Revenge," he assured him, stepping from the shadows into the flickering light from that single candle.
Blackwood stared, first in confusion, then disbelief.
"I know you! From Calais... ! I had you under my sword!"
Ruari nodded, but it was not what happened at Calais that had brought him here. And he would make certain Blackwood knew it before he killed him.
Blackwood glanced at the metal armor that encased his left arm, and a slow smile began.
"So, now you think to take your revenge for the loss of your arm?" He laughed.
"I think not." The laugh deepened. "This will be no challenge at all."
He lunged then with his sword. Ruari side-stepped, then brought his own sword down at Blackwood's back.
Hours, days, weeks of sweat, agonizing pain, but always with one purpose--to overcome what had been lost, to find himself again, now to come to this place with one purpose. Everything had changed with the attack at Lechlede.
Revenge.
Not for himself, not for the loss at Calais, but for another... the one who had withstood his anger and pain, who had refused to let him die, and had given him back his life.
He circled back, countered the next blow, then swept with the blade in his left hand. Blackwood evaded, stumbled, then regained his footing and came at him. Blow for blow, strike for strike, even as Blackwood's blows left their mark at the metal that encased his arm.
He had no illusions about confronting Blackwood. They had met before on that stretch of beach at Calais. But this time it did not matter if he died as long as he took Blackwood with him. For her. So that in his dying moments, Blackwood would know that he had lost everything--Lechlede, his ambitions for Fraser lands, and his life as his blood ran out.
"You put the dead vermin in my food!" Blackwood struck but again his sword found only air.
Ruari drove him back, again and again. And each time, Blackwood countered, fierce, powerful, like an animal who had fought these battles before, had won each time, and had no intention of losing now.
"The lowest animal, easily killed," Ruari replied, his meaning not lost on Blackwood.
The clash of metal against metal echoed off the stones of the chapel. In the flickering of light from the lamp Ruari saw the strain at Blackwood's face, heard the sound of his labored breathing.
"Blood for blood," Ruari assured him. "For those you have tortured and murdered."
He was beyond pain, beyond exhaustion, he felt nothing in that place where he had gone before, a dark place where there was only the man before him, with only one outcome.
Sounds came, shouting, then the one called Mallory burst into the chapel.
"Milord... !?" He stared from one man to the other.
"Get out!" Blackwood shouted. "This will soon be done!"
As he stepped into light, Ruari glimpsed the wound at Blackwood's face, a fine, long slash near enough his eye that it might have taken it, and he knew of a certain who had given him that wound even as she was overpowered--courage, fierce pride, and stubbornness.
Ruari heard none of the other sounds, saw nothing else. There was only Blackwood as he drove hard against him. It would be now, and the soldiers would come. But his would not be the only death.
Blackwood slowly smiled. The next blow staggered Ruari back. Pain sliced through him. He felt the warmth of fresh blood as Blackwood's sword cut through leather at his ribs.
"Blood for blood? I think not!" Blackwood's evil grin widened as he prepared for the death blow. He swung his sword high over his shoulder.
Ruari deflected the blow with the sword at his left hand, then struck with the shorter blade clenched in the other.
Blackwood stared at him with surprise then disbelief as Ruari took his weight against him and thrust the shorter blade deep.
Blackwood clutched the front of his vest.
"Who are you?!" he screamed.
Ruari tore Blackwood's hand loose, then shoved him away and kicked his sword toward him.
"Pick it up!"
And like an animal that refused to stop, Blackwood slowly bent and retrieved the sword. He raised it, both hands wrapped around the handle. He cursed as blood backed into his throat, then lunged.
Ruari deflected the blow as Blackwood staggered past him, then spun and brought his own sword up, the metal fist wrapped around the handle. The blow caught Blackwood at the back of his legs, slicing through chausses, flesh and tendons.
Legs cut out from under him, Blackwood collapsed to the floor of the chapel, spitting blood and curses as rage burned through him. Even then with death certain, unable to stand, his life blood pouring out, Blackwood tried to raise himself up and grabbed for his sword.
Ruari kicked it away, then knelt beside the dying man. He wanted Blackwood to see him as he drew his last breath.
"Damn you to hell!" Blackwood cursed, a rattling sound as shouts and other sounds came from beyond the door of the chapel.
"Who are you?!"
It wouldn't be long. Even now, blood pooling beneath him, helpless, unable to stand or even crawl, death was close. Still Blackwood fought it, with an evil that gleamed in his eyes.
"Who sent you?!"
The light from the oil lamp gleamed at the dark stain that spread across the front of Blackwood's shirt, the silver chain covered in blood.
Ruari tore the chain from about Blackwood's neck, the bronze ring with the blue stone, in the quivering light of the oil lamp.
"Fraser?" Blackwood whispered.
"Aye, Fraser.," Ruari told him. "Remember it, and may you burn in hell."
It was quickly done, the blade sliced across Blackwood's throat.
He had killed before, in battle, and before that, when hardly more than a boy. There was no pleasure in it, only that sense of something that must be done, then that coldness deep inside afterward--no feeling, no regret, only that dark void.
Sounds from beyond the chapel brought Ruari to his feet. He scanned the chapel. Blackwood lay before the stone altar, a fitting sacrifice.
As sounds grew louder, he tucked the ring inside the front of his vest along with the shorter blade where he could quickly draw it, then seized the oil lamp.
He scattered burning oil across the floor of the chapel. It soaked the straw that had been scattered there and burst into flames that quickly spread to the wood chair, then that symbol of death--Blackwood's banner igniting, the dragon woven into the rich silk suddenly bursting into flames then disappearing as smoke thickened the air.
"Burn in hell," he said as flames crawl over Blackwood's body. "And may the devil eat your soul."
He ran for the door as shouts filled the air, the chapel quickly engulfed in flames.
There was only one way out--through the fire.
He listened for sounds beyond the chapel door even as smoke burned at his lungs. As the smoke thickened and the fire spread closer, he yanked the chapel door open.
Fed by that gust of air, the fire momentarily retreated, then followed with a vengeance. It churned through the opening behind him, like a ravening beast, finding fresh fuel in old wood at the church proper, consuming straw at the floor and at pallets where the soldiers made their beds and now fled as flames swarmed through the old church. As they fled out the main doors of the church to escape the inferno, Ruari ducked down a passage into a side chamber.
It was empty except for a smaller altar, a wood cross, no doubt where the penitent waited for the monks to hear their confession of sins, and collect grain, livestock, or other payments to save their souls, just as he had seen over and over again at the monastery as a boy with no understanding of how a merciful God made use of such things while people starved and froze to death.
The roof of the storage chamber was made of cross timbers that had long ago rotted and fallen in. The English who had come and made a fortress at Cu Lodain had laid fresh timbers, no doubt with the thought of restoring the roof. But time and weather--mostly weather--had slowed their efforts and even now rain poured in through openings in the over-head beams.
The fire would reach the storage chamber even with the rain. Nothing could stop that now, but in the time it took to reach this part of the chapel he might be able to escape.
There was no door to the outside of the chamber. His only hope was to escape through one of the gaps in the roof overhead. Then, once outside, he would have to make a run for the stables.
He slipped the claymore into the leather scabbard at his back, then crossed to the lowest part of the roof where rotted timbers gaped open overhead. Even at his height, the roof was a good distance beyond his reach. But as smoke billowed into the chamber with the fire not far behind, he made a decision and leapt for the opening.
A second time he thrust his good hand up through the opening, slipped on the rain-slicked surface, then caught the edge of the sagging timber. The rotted beam groaned at his added weight but it held. He thrust his other hand through the opening and prayed the damned metal contraption strapped about his chest and shoulder wouldn't come loose.
For a few moments he hung like stag that had been hunted then strung up, suspended by that metal arm a good distance above the floor of the storeroom.
Muscles aching, pain burning at his ribs, he thrust his left arm up through the opening and pulled himself up, then out onto the cross work of timbers and into the icy rain. He rolled toward the edge of the roof, then dropped to the muddied ground below.
He landed hard and laid there for several moments, gathering his strength, then pushed to his feet. He waited, against the outside wall of the church, scanning the yard beyond as flames appeared through the timbers where he had escaped only moments before.
The yard of the fortress was in chaos. English soldiers fled the shelter of the burning church while others attempted to smother out the flames in a losing battle. The fire was like a hungry beast that quickly engulfed everything in its path, consumed, then spread toward the outer walls.
Over the roar of wind and the hiss of the fire as rain pelted down, he heard the one called Mallory shouting orders as he ordered the horses released at the long shed that had caught fire, flames racing like a demon across the roof, the sounds of the horses piercing the night air as they pulled at their tethers, while others that had managed to free themselves fled and bolted across the yard adding to the chaos. The gates were opened and both men and horses fled the inferno.
Ruari seized the only chance he would have and ran toward the shed. He grabbed the rope about the neck of one of the horses and pulled himself astride as flames spread and lit up the night sky. A man beside him paid no heed in his panic to flee the fire and vaulted onto the back of another horse. The animal bolted, the soldier clinging to his back, then slipping into the mud.
Ruari laid low across the neck of the horse and sent him among the other horses as they fled through the opened gates, out into the storm with the fire at his back, toward the forest beyond.
In that way of horses, several had followed in their escape, and had moved closer as the stallion stopped, most of them Fraser horses--safety in greater numbers.
He slowly let out the breath he'd been holding as he reached the shelter of the thick tree cover. The cold and that fierce survival instinct had kept the pain at bay, and no doubt the bleeding as well. But he felt the wet warmth beneath the icy layer of the fleece vest, as he sent his horse deeper into the forest.
The weather was unforgiving, closing in with a vengeance, not unlike the times as a lad when he had been forced to take shelter with Gabhran.
The old warrior knew the land, where water could be found, all the rocky cairns and high cliffs. Even during a storm.
"The wind will tell ye, lad, in yer face down from the north. Tis the way of it and a man learns it or doesna live long when winter is upon the land. Remember wot I've told ye."
He held himself against the pain at his ribs, and turned the stallion with the wind gusting back. He urged the stallion forward, bent low over the horse's with the pain, the wet and cold freezing at his back.
"Do not stop!" the old warrior's words slipped through the cold and pain.
"If ye stop, the cold will take ye. If not the cold, then the beasts will be gnawing at yer bones! Your only chance, boy, is to keep moving."